Re: From words to dates: Water into wine, mathemagic or phylogeneti

From: tgpedersen
Message: 47347
Date: 2007-02-08

> > Agriculture is nor responsible for the spread of the IE-speaking
> > Corded Ware culture into Europe, mr Klekar. It was already in
> > place.
> >

> "Its connections with the probably pre-Indo-European Funnelbeaker
> culture and the probably Proto-Indo-European Corded Ware culture are
> debated. As the language left no records, its linguistic
> affiliations are a mystery."
> The key words here are "probably".

"Probably" is the key word in all of science. People who don't want to
accept that cause all kinds of problems for scientists.

> You are assuming that the Corded Ware culture was IE speaking.

Yes. It probably was.

> Its all circular reasoning. First CW is asummed to have spoken IE
> languages and then IE langauges are supposed to have spread where
> ever the CW culture is found.

No. IE languages are assumed to have been spoken where ever the CW culture
is found. That's not circular.

> This kind of thinking is not scientific and is out of fashion these
> days.

It is not scientific or it is out of fashion?

> Where is the evidence of CW culture in South Asia?

The assumption that IE languages were spoken where ever CW culture is
found does not imply an assumption that CW culture is found where ever
IE languages were spoken.

> I produce just one quote to prove my point.

No you don't. You never do that. You just quote someone who agrees
with you. I don't think you know what 'prove' means.

> "Thus the core area of the Hallstat D sites has been seen as the
> area in which a Celtic koine or lingua franca developed. Such ideas
> are highly speculative.

All of science is speculative, including the last sentence of the

> They owe much to early twentieth century thinking, which assumed
> that an archeological complex is equivalent of a culture and that a
> culture is a product of a specific people-indeed, in the opinion of
> some writers, a specific race....

Davies is so under-educated that he thinks the association between a
people and an archaeological complex is early twentieth century, ie
Nazi (which of course he doesn't spell out, that might incur the
attention of people who are more knowledgeable on the subject than
himself; note the significant ominous dots...). Or, more likely, he is
an opportunist who knows that this is where he can get funding.

But assume we accept his premise. In that case nothing is attributable
to a specific people, and the Rgveda was not composed by a culture
that had anything to do with India.

> (Omitted paragraph)
> Such theories are now viewed with suspicion.

Mr. Davies has every reason to view them with suspicion. It would take
him years to master them. Much easier then to assume a red-guard posture.

> There is a realization that they involve a considerable degree of
> circular argument;

Mr. Davies was about to write 'circular argument' since that is what
he has seen other people write when he realized that he wasn't able to
show anything circular in those views, and therefore he chose to write
'a considerable degree of circular argument' in order to maintain
deniability, ie. if someone from the old school should take him to
task on his assertion of circularity, he could deny ever haven't
expressed such a view.

> archeologist have taken on trust notions from linguists, as have
> linguists from archeologist, causing each to build on the other's
> myths (Davies 2000, p. 26)."

Replace 'notion' and 'myth' with 'assumption' and that's an accurate
description. That's how science works. Maybe what you want is religion?